The CEO of Facebook's virtual reality arm, Oculus, steps down

Iribe will remain at Oculus and lead a new division within the Facebook-owned company that's dedicated to building high-end virtual reality for PCs, he said in a blog post on Tuesday. A new mobile VR group will be led by Jon Thomason, who recently joined from Amazon.

In an interesting twist, Oculus says it won't be looking for a new CEO for Oculus, but rather "a new leader to manage the Oculus teams."

Iribe, Thomason, and Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer will together look for someone to fill the role.

Iribe helped create Oculus as a Kickstarter project with Palmer Luckey in 2012 and was brought on as CEO when Facebook acquired the startup for $2 billion in 2014.

"Looking ahead and thinking about where I'm most passionate, I've decided to lead the PC VR group—pushing the state of VR forward with Rift, research and computer vision," Iribe said in a Tuesday blog post. "As we've grown, I really missed the deep, day-to-day involvement in building a brand new product on the leading edge of technology."

John Carmack, who spearheaded development of Oculus' mobile product, Gear VR, will continue to be CTO of Oculus, focusing on mobile. Michael Abrash will remain chief science officer and lead research at Oculus, reporting to Iribe.

Iribe's blog post curiously makes no mention of his Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey, who has gone silent and not appeared publicly since he admitted to funding anti-Hillary Clinton internet memes in September. A spokesperson for Oculus told Business Insider that Luckey is still at the company, and that there will be "more details on his role in the future."